page_title: Operation Sea Lion
section_title: British monarchy
hierarchical_section_title: Operation Sea Lion / Planned occupation of Britain / British monarchy
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Franz Six
context_page_description: Operation Sea Lion, also written as Operation Sealion, was Nazi Germany's code name for the plan for an invasion of the United Kingdom during the Battle of Britain in the Second World War. Following the Fall of France, Adolf Hitler, the German Führer and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, hoped the British government would seek a peace agreement and he reluctantly considered invasion only as a last resort if all other options failed.
  However, once Hitler had determined that Germany would invade the Soviet Union in 1941, the desirability of forcing Britain out of the war before that date increased the attractiveness of an invasion, as potentially offering a quick and decisive victory in the West. As a precondition, Hitler specified the achievement of both air and naval superiority over the English Channel and the proposed landing sites, but the German forces did not achieve either at any point during the war, and both the German High Command and Hitler himself had serious doubts about the prospects for success.
context_section_description: A Channel 5 documentary broadcast on 16 July 2009 repeated the claim that the Germans intended to restore Edward VIII to the throne in the event of a German occupation. Many senior German officials believed the Duke of Windsor to be highly sympathetic to the Nazi government, a feeling that was reinforced by his and Wallis Simpson's 1937 visit to Germany. However, despite German approaches, "The Duke never wavered in his loyalty to Great Britain during the war", according to a statement by the British Foreign Office.
caption: Franz Six in 1940. He would later be convicted during the Nuremberg trials.
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